


[C] A Parent's Heart Bared

by PeepMeep



Category: Code Geass, Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adopted Children, Established Relationship, M/M, POV First Person, commission, surprise debra ginsberg quote
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 09:02:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16807573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeepMeep/pseuds/PeepMeep
Summary: I couldn’t stop thinking of one thing.How she was actually my daughter.A commission





	[C] A Parent's Heart Bared

**Author's Note:**

> Hi new fandoms! Check this out.

It’s been some time, but I’m still not used to the TARDIS. I was used to the cockpits of the knightmare frames I’ve piloted, but they were small and served a very specific purpose. But they were also made by man and while they always pushed the boundaries of science and technology, they still followed what we knew of the limits of time and space. And yes, it’s bigger on the inside, but it’s only fitting that a man like the Doctor would pilot a craft like this. Everything in it had a use, even if I wasn’t able to comprehend it.

There were a lot of things about our current situation that took some getting used to.

“Suzaku.”

I looked up from my journaling to see another of the Doctor’s travelling companions, his daughter Arata.

“What can I help you with?”

“I was wondering if you’ve seen dad anywhere.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t seen him.” I paused. “Today” wasn’t the right word; periods of time like that didn’t mean much when you could go anywhere and anywhen. I settled with “I haven’t seen him recently.”

“Okay.” She adjusted her goggles, always worn over her eyes as if she were just about to hop into an old-fashioned airplane. Satisfied, she continued with “Have you seen Lelouch?”

“No, he said he was going to wander around, try to get a better feel of the layout here.”

“Oh.” Arata pursed her lips. “It’s possible he might have gotten lost.”

“Maybe. It’s happened to me plenty of times.”

“I’ll go looking for him.” She turned and walked out of my doorway but quickly returned, adding “And if you see dad, could you let him know I’m looking for him, too?”

“Of course.” Once she had left, I couldn’t stop thinking of one thing.

How she was actually my daughter.

The first few, well, let’s go with “adventures” to denote that period of time, had been a blur. There was so many new things Lelouch and I discovered and faced that it still leaves me confused to think about it all. It was only after awhile that the Doctor told us this secret.

Arata was our daughter, but from some point in the future.

“Your future, specifically,” he had told us. “There’s lots of futures, of course, lots of different versions of her and you and everything else you know. But she’s your daughter, from you. The versions of you that you are right now.”

We had so many questions. She didn’t recognize us when we first met, our names didn’t mean anything to her. The things we mentioned from when we lived she recognized, but only in that way you do when you learn of something from the past, from some third party in a history class. She didn’t know when she was born or how old she was when she was adopted by the Doctor. If he knew the answers, he never told us.

“But you can never tell her,” he said. “It’s of the utmost importance for her safety that she doesn’t think otherwise.”

“You can’t tell us that and expect us to keep it a secret!” Lelouch was upset and I wanted to console my husband, but I was torn. I barely knew her and already I loved our daughter. She didn’t look much like either of us, with dark black hair and eyes the most brilliant shade of blue. Always calm, kind, humble…nothing like Lelouch. She always wore this very old-fashioned aviator helmet, which she seemed very proud of.

“It was a gift,” she said, “from Amelia Earhart.”

I mentioned that I wasn’t familiar with the name.

“Oh, you would have loved her, she was a pilot, too. She was the first woman to have flown across the Atlantic.”

Talking to her was always painful for me. I wanted to know everything about her, more than any friend or fellow adventurer would care to of their companion. Every offhand mention of a time or place she had been to ran the risk of being from our shared future and I didn’t trust myself to keep the Doctor’s secret under duress. I tried to keep an emotional distance from her, just in case, no matter how badly it hurt. I couldn’t be selfish and put her in danger.

Lelouch didn’t seem to have this issue and I must admit that I was jealous. He told her about Zero and the rebellion and our work in trying to make the world a better place, but he neglected to mention the amount of blood that was on our hands. Arata was too kind and loving of all things to handle the knowledge of what we knew. Even knowing about using a Geass to control people would be morally reprehensible to her, so she didn’t know of that, either.

I wondered how much of her actually came from us and how much was from how the Doctor raised her.

Shortly we were to go on another one of these adventures. The Doctor had us standing in a circle in the control room of the TARDIS. He spoke animatedly, hands moving to accentuate his gestures as his face lit up; it was hard to believe he was an ancient being who’s lived through so much, traveled the universe bearing many faces and had touched the lives of countless people, changing the course of history again and again.

I couldn’t help but wonder what he would do if he came to my world, when I was younger and could benefit so greatly from someone much more experienced. Fighting the evils of the world while still learning about it myself…I knew Arata was ultimately in good hands. If I had to choose someone else to raise our child, I couldn’t think of anyone better than the Doctor.

Arata stood next to her adoptive father, rapt in attention. Her focus never wavered in whatever she did. We were going to help some people out, somewhere I’ve never heard of, of course, with players I had no knowledge of. But it didn’t matter to my daughter, someone was in need and she could do something to help.

I can’t even remember why we were there. I knew I wished I had my knightmare frame with me to make the battle easier. I finally encountered those monsters known as Daleks, who’s hate was deeper than I could have possibly imagined. Pilots of metal machines, solely to bring about death and destruction. But while Lelouch and I fought-and yes, killed-to make the world a better place and improve the lives of our people, they only sought to destroy.

Whatever transpired to cause the next series of events I’ll never know but I know that ultimately it didn’t matter. I was close to Lelouch and the Doctor but wasn’t aware of where Arata was; I was too focused on the immediate area around me and what I was fighting. Then rang out the last words heard of countless beings.

“ＥＸＴＥＲＭＩＮＡＴＥ”

I turned and saw the blue light of the Dalek’s gunstick, moments before it fired. The Doctor, with a vicious look on his impossibly young face, was about to make a move, quickly turned to one of horror. Somehow Arata was now between us and the monster. There was a flash of light and then she crumpled to the ground.

“No!” I’m not sure who’s voice it was, it didn’t matter. I was paralyzed, thoughts only of what I had just lost.

“ＥＸＴＥＲＭＩ-”

“Die.”

There was the sound that always gave me chills, the flash of red light of a Geass activating, now a circle rimming the lens of the Dalek’s eye stalk.

“ＭＵＳＴ ＦＯＬＬＯＷ ＯＲＤＥＲ. ＭＵＳＴ ＳＥＬＦ ＥＸＴＥＲＭＩＮＡＴＥ.”

Its metal body shook, and it let out one final, garbled cry before it exploded. Lelouch smirked, satisfied with the outcome, only snapping back to reality when he saw me fall to my knees.

“This can’t be happening…” The child I barely knew, who would never know who her true parents were…

With shaky hands the Doctor touched her face. Tears leaked from his eyes but he was silent. He paused.

“She’s still alive.” He scooped her up and ran back to the TARDIS, her helmet falling off in the process. I chased after them, I couldn’t leave her side. 

She was laid out on a table, the Doctor digging through what looked like a very regular first aid kit.

“By some miracle that horrid monster must not have had its weapon turned up high enough.” He returned to her, holding a roll of white bandages with squares of blue. “A miracle,” he muttered. Carefully he wrapped it around her crown and temples.

“That weapon must have barely grazed her.” I jumped in surprise; before my heart felt like it was going to explode but my husband at my side didn’t bring me the comfort it usually does. He offered the helmet to me. I turned it over in my hands, noting the charred line along its side. Only a few more centimeters and it would have been a direct hit.

“I wasn’t sure that my Geass was going to work,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking, I just had to do something.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose control of it.” My voice sounded so foreign, as if it was from someone else. It didn’t match the paralyzing franticness I felt inside.

If it hadn’t worked, if he felt even a fraction as I do now, the chaos of his mind would have caused the Geass to consume him, then I would have lost everyone.

“We can’t keep doing this.”

Lelouch didn’t immediately say anything. We were sitting in what served as our bedroom. I had to excuse myself, despite knowing Arata was okay, I didn’t trust myself to behave only as a concerned friend.

“But the Doctor-“

“To hell with what he said! That’s our daughter, dammit, and we almost lost her today.”

“I know, and I don’t like it, either.” He sighed. “How is this safer than her living with us?”

“Maybe we failed. Maybe someone else came along and ruined that peace. But I still don’t understand how _this_ is a better alternative, he could have just brought her someplace else.”

“Of all the times and places he could have gone, it had to be _our_ daughter and he had to have _us_ running around with him on these adventures. It’s ridiculous.” Lelouch crossed his arms. He seemed much calmer about this than he should have been, but I knew it was because he was only playing it out internally. Lelouch vi Britannia didn’t have to convince me of anything, he could tone it down with talking to me. I knew all of his vulnerabilities and he, mine.

“This can’t just be a coincidence,” I said. “There has to be a reason for this he’s not telling us.” I held my head in my hands. If we were home, there could have been a simple answer. Political assassination, kidnapping, ransom. Something had happened to us and she needed someone else to take care of her. But she could have assumed a new identity and lived her life in a world that she already knew. We had done it and we…I couldn’t say that we turned out “fine”, but we lived. We knew the people around us, we knew the history of our world and that we had a place in it. Instead she only had one person she knew and lived in this confusing mess of a machine.

“We have to tell her.”

“I almost lost you today.”

“I’m sorry, dad.”

I froze. I was looking for the Doctor, to talk to him first, but I had accidentally stumbled upon something entirely different. I stayed just outside the door so I could listen.

“I’ve told you about Daleks, why would you do that?”

A pause. “I don’t know. I just saw that you were all in danger and I knew I had to do something.”

“You threw yourself in front of it, what did you think that would do?”

Another pause. “I knew that it would keep you from getting hurt.”

“Arata…I know that you care and you mean well, but you can’t just jump into something without a plan.”

“I know, dad.”

“I’m not sure if you do. You put everything at risk because you didn’t know of anything else you could do. I told you what the risks would be, that there might be Daleks.”

“I know.”

“Hoping that that horrible thing would miss or its gunstick was only set to stun isn’t a plan. Sacrificing yourself isn’t a plan.”

“I know.”

The Doctor sighed. “You’re my daughter, you mean so much to me, you wouldn’t even know. And you’re important to so many more. But I’ve seen countless others die, more wars than anyone should ever experience, and I know how easy it is to lose everything in one moment. I might be a Time Lord but there’s still things that even I can’t fix.”

“I understand.”

“I truly hope you do. I can’t protect you forever, but I hope I won’t have to see the day I can’t.”

I then heard movement, as if they were about to leave the room. I decided to make myself scarce.

Still I turn their words over in my head. It’s true, despite all the miraculous things the Doctor and his machines can do, he’s still not God and doesn’t control everything. I, too, have seen so many die and know how quickly that can happen.

Again, I think of what must have happened for things to turn out the way they did. While this all seems so far removed from our home, there’s still the possibility that something happened in Japan or Britannia to set this into motion. Lelouch and I gave and sacrificed so much for the sake of freedom and peace, was it all for not? Empires rising and falling is a natural part of history, of course, and nothing is forever, but did our efforts crumble when we were still alive? Did our enemies enact revenge?

What was it that drew the Doctor to us? Every parent feels their child is special, but was there something more than that? What brought them together?

A chill passed over me. Were we wrong in the first place? Did the Doctor arrive to set things straight, either by his own sense of morality or that of the universe’s? Arata would have been an unintended casualty if he had not intervened.

Was that even her name? She remembers nothing of her life before the Doctor, he could have told her anything about her family and her world and she wouldn’t be the wiser.

Maybe this was a loop, a self-fulfilling prophecy, so when we do have our daughter, we would name her as such, as that’s what her name already was. We would leave a message for the Doctor so for when he finally arrives, he knows to look after her. I’ve seen plenty of stories of things like this, but never gave any deeper thought to the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey-ness of how things went; I was only focused on the mistakes of the past, seizing the present to build a better future.

The world, nay, the entirety of creation was so much more hostile and crueler than what we knew before all this. Japan was oppressed but it still existed, people died but weren’t eradicated like vermin. There was hope, that’s why we did what we had to, because it wasn’t crushed. The Britannians were cruel but they didn’t shed their humanity to become avatars of hate. There would never be a Dalek that could recognize the sin of its people and rebel to right the wrongs

Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did – that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that – a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.

I could keep on this way, as if that accursed Doctor never brought us with him, never told us his terrible secret, never took our daughter from us. But there was always that fear of next time: Next time she acted without thinking. Next time we were a moment too late. Next time fate intervened and separated us once again.

This couldn’t go on forever, because nothing is forever.

She looked no worse the wear. Our daughter again was smiling, as if nothing had happened, as if nothing would ever happen. Her beloved helmet was repaired, leaving no mark as to our collective mistakes. Again she was at the side of the man she knew as her father, hanging on to his every word. He was the Doctor, his word was law and he could do no wrong. A man as ageless as could be and who made infinite decisions that brought pain and suffering to many, despite his best intentions. Actions for the good of all meant that a few had to suffer. It was something I struggled to come to terms with when I was so young and something he must be keenly aware of, but on a much grander scale. In a universe of billions upon billions of living things, any decision that causes harm somewhere, no matter how slight, still meant that tens, hundreds, thousands if not millions would suffer, if not die. Arata, my daughter, the person that had come into my life before she was born and encompassed my everything, would weep even if a flower were trotted upon and crushed. She knew more than us but so little, nothing of the things that truly mattered.

There, a natural pause in the conversation. I took a step forward. My husband, knowing, nodded his head in support.

“I have something to say.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/chasestarb) and [tumblr](http://phektrek.tumblr.com/)! I'm always open for commissions, message me if interested. You can find info about commissions [here](http://www.chasej.xyz/commission-information/).  
> 


End file.
